On a recent Thursday night at the 29th Street Ballroom in Austin, Texas, Grant Gibbs and Ashley Gill gyrated onstage in front of a rotating series of photos of the actor Don Cheadle and belted out a self-written anthem begging him to “euthanize” them. If this sounds bizarre to you, you probably don’t spend a lot of time on TikTok.
Over the past few years, Mr. Gibbs and Ms. Gill, comedians best known by their stage name, A Twink and a Redhead, have amassed more than 600,000 followers on the platform by posting everything from satirical music videos to skits in which they pretend to be a delusional couple looking for swinging opportunities at Disney World.
Their deadpan and at times salacious brand of comedy has earned them a recurring role in a popular InStyle magazine TikTok series, an appearance on the Bravo show “Watch What Happens Live” and, most recently, a 17-city tour that kicked off March 25, in which they perform songs like “Don Cheadle” from their 2024 EP.
“We were like, how can we make a show that features all the songs but in a way you wouldn’t expect?” Mr. Gibbs said in a recent joint interview with Ms. Gill. “And so we wrote an original musical, inserting the songs all into the story, and the story is basically our origin, loosely based on true events, about how did the world’s most iconic duo come to be?”
According to Mr. Gibbs and Ms. Gill, who are both 27 and from Hillsborough, New Jersey, their iconic duodom started in sixth grade, when they were set up by a mutual friend to kiss in a bouncy house. “We went into the house and did a little bouncing, and then the time came and we looked at each other and I said, ‘I can’t do this,’” said Mr. Gibbs.
“He wasn’t into it,” Ms. Gill confirmed. “Not only did this man reject me, but I had just dumped my boyfriend to go do this because I took a stand against adultery at a young age, and I was left with no one — just my luck.”
The show captures that moment as well as others that lead to their enduring friendship. “There’s a song called ‘Sixth Grade Carnival,’ which is about it all,” Mr. Gibbs said. “We’re two outcasts that are really kind of struggling in high school, but find each other and find friendship.”
They attended Florida State University together before moving to Brooklyn and creating the “A Twink and a Redhead” TikTok account in March 2022. Their earliest videos satirize influencer couples and feature Mr. Gibbs playing the closeted gay husband to Ms. Gill’s clueless wife.
“It evolved from this idea of being anti-influencer,” Mr. Gibbs said. As part of the bit, Ms. Gill developed a high-pitched, aggressively fake giggle that she deployed so much that it occasionally replaces her actual laugh.
“The lines between art and reality are getting blurred in a really scary way,” she joked. “I talk about this with my therapist, and I would say the character, at least for me, is a times ten version of myself. It’s kind of an exaggeration, like, what would it be like if it were me, but completely uninhibited delusional?”
“Sadly, I think it’s only like times two for me,” Mr. Gibbs quipped.
Their exaggerated personas and unapologetic tone occasionally land them in hot water. In October 2025, they posted a video filmed at Disney World, in which Ms. Gill pretends to be jealous of Ariel from “The Little Mermaid.” The video went viral and caused “a scandal,” as Ms. Gill called it, prompting viral responses from fans and former Disney World employees who felt the comedians had bullied the performer.
And during their recent “Watch What Happens Live” appearance, Mr. Gibbs’s awkward exchange with the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Amanda Frances — in which he referenced the divisive fan reaction to her first season but told her she “means well” — also caused a stir.
But the controversies seemed to only add to their follower count. Their collaboration with a legacy brand like InStyle has also broadened their fan base.
“The Intern,” the duo’s series on InStyle’s TikTok channel, has garnered hundreds of thousands of views, and helped introduce “an unserious, unexpected side of InStyle,” said Sally Holmes, the magazine’s editor in chief. “They have this rare ability to be both completely chaotic and incredibly intentional.”
As they kick off their musical tour, Mr. Gibbs and Ms. Gill are hoping to parlay “A Twink and a Redhead” into a film or TV pilot, or an Off Broadway show, Cole Escola style. But they’re still struggling to figure out how much they should separate the art from the artist.
“I think the first few years of us doing social media, a lot of people didn’t know if we were being true or not,” Mr. Gibbs said. “But now, I think we have established ourselves as ‘satirical public figures,’ or whatever, and it’s like, well, what now? And do people want to see the real us?”
The post Make Way for ‘A Twink and a Redhead’ appeared first on New York Times.
